“We raised seed funding from Tech Coast Angels as the youngest team they have ever invested in and still managed to graduate college a semester early.”

By Anna Sergeeva (Co-Founder, Planana)

I never thought I would be an entrepreneur.

Growing up, I didn’t operate a lemonade stand or lawn mowing business like the entrepreneurs who are “born with it.” My parents and I immigrated to America from the Ukraine and, like in most immigrant families, it was understood that I would get good grades to get into a good college to land a good, stable job.

But my life paradigm completely changed when I found myself in a community of Western entrepreneurs who were trying to build their lives and fortunes. They were passionate, tenacious,

“If not for Startup Weekend, when I graduated I’d be looking for jobs like my classmates instead of creating them.”

When Anna Sergeeva and Fei Xiao attended their first Startup Weekend in Los Angeles in February 2011 they didn’t quite know what to expect. With no real understanding of front or backend design and as the only college students at the event, Anna and Fei felt out of their element. Their classes in entrepreneurship at USC had whetted their appetites for the world of startups but they weren’t founders and didn’t know anything about coding.